I hardly ever read the comics anymore, but every so often I break out Mark Trail because that shit is hilarious. That guy will do anything to draw an animal rather than a human being! Here’s, like, a whole panel of a flamingo while people are talking in speech bubbles that struggle to get out from under the flamingo!
Current strips: I like *Doonesbury, Get Fuzzy, Pearls Before Swine, Dilbert, WT Duck *(not sure if it’s in newspapers, but it’s a must for anyone who freelances), Rose is Rose, The New Adventures of Queen Victoria.
Our local paper has a terrible selection of comics, but the worst is Nest Heads. And Judge Parker, but that’s just a blank part of the page to me.
Like: Blondie
Beetle Bailey
Family Circus
Fox Trot
Dinette Set
Zits
Close to Home
Dislike: Peanuts. It was cute 45 years ago, but now it’s just sad.
I read Mark Trail and Mary Worth exclusively for their unintentional comedy value, and can’t wait to see what the Comics Curmudgeon has to say about them every day. My coworker Lori and I have become ironic Mary Worth groupies. “Did you see her *arm *today? How is it even attached?”
Holy cannoli, that link to excerpts from the Dilbert creator’s rant is amazing! Does anyone have a link to the whole original post? Someone in my office tacks a Dilbert strip in the break room every day, and I’d love to augment it.
I don’t understand the brouhaha over Mary Worth lately, but I haven’t seen it in years. Someone other than Earnst & Saunders must be doing it now. Otherwise I don’t see the point of the OP.
Bland-thony? Is that because he isn’t a slap-happy smart-aleck? He saved Elizabeth from forcible rape. If that’s “bland,” I’ll accept it any day.
My favorites these days:
Funky Winkerbean
Luann
Baldo
Rose Is Rose
Beetle Bailey
Ziggy
Family Circus (RIP Bil Keane :()
Marmaduke
Garfield
Bizarro
Shortcuts
Frank and Ernest
The Born Loser
(The last two we get on Sundays only.)
I also uised to enjoy: Tumbleweeds; Alley Oop; Out Our Way; Grin and Bear It; Peanuts; Nancy; Dick Tracy; Blondie; Moon Mullins; Little Iodine; Wee Pals; They’ll Do It Every Time; Captain Easy.
And immediately (and I mean IMMEDIATELY) afterwards begged her to save him from a loveless marriage and help raise his child.
Daily reads/loves, in rough order of preference:
Lio - Often surreal, occasionally hilarious; definitely my current fave.
Non Sequitur - I like the adventures of Danae and her pet horse-the Sunday ones and the one-offs don’t do much for me tho, the opposite of someone upthread.
Get Fuzzy - While the pacing could be better, the wordplay more than makes up for things.
Pearls Before Swine - Hits enough extra base hits to make up for the popups and whiffs.
Mother Goose and Grimm - Even more of a hit or miss proposition that PBS, but when it connects it can be the funniest out there.
Pickles - Yeah, a domestic gag-a-day strip in a sea of clones, but is slyer and thus funnier than most.
Doonesbury - Rarely elicits even a under-my-breath chuckle anymore; I guess I read it out of habit more than anything else.
Luann - At least it allows its characters to grow and change (see Zits below), but might end up in the FBOFW Hell if it keeps getting any soapier.
Rose Is Rose - Would have been much higher 10 years ago, but the original creator signed off and…something…was lost. I got an anthology recently from that period and it was much funnier and fresher. Perhaps there are only so many ways you can do funnycute…
Monty - Adventures of a geeky loser, humor is more often crude and obvious, but occ. chuckle-worthy.
Zits - Even 2 years ago this like RIR would have been much higher, but lately the jokes are becoming increasingly stale and recycled (Jeremy is a slob, Jeremy’s mom is shrewish and exasperated, Jeremy’s dad is purposely uncool, etc.), and at the current rate Jeremy will graduate sometime in the year 2023 if he’s lucky. As contrasted with Luann seems to have moved away from soap opera-ish storylines and is pretty much back to gag-a-day’s: not sure if that is for the best tho. Imagine Jeremy and his buddies going on a month-long trip across the country in their van. No I guess not.
Zombies I still love:
Calvin and Hobbes - Best comic strip in history, bar none.
Peanuts - currently in its 60’s heyday on Gocomics.
There are other zombies which I liked at the time, but have no interest in revisiting: Bloom County & Preteena to name two. I’d read Far Side reruns every day tho if Larson ever gave his say-so.
Faded faves (or ones I have dabbled in) which I no longer click on:
Mutts - Stuck in a rut as others have said upthread.
FBOFW - The like started to fade soon after Anthony showed up, and the reboot sealed the deal.
9 Chickweed Lane :
This example precisely illustrates why I dropped this strip from my queue-the adventures of an insufferable prima donna and her unending parade of thinly-disguised pictorial double-entendres. To each his own.
Frazz - Yeah, I get it, tries to deliberately be clever as can be-often far too much so for its own good. Humor is as dry as a desert as a result.
Dilbert - Think you could, oh I don’t know, freshen things up by moving things back out of the office? Huh? Just once in awhile? Whatever.
Garfield - I’d say that it was funnier back in its early days, but perhaps not-I went back to the beginning at Gocomics awhile back and read about 6 months worth-better, but not that much.
Hates are far too many to list; I’ll just say that I dropped the Comics Curmudgeon from my daily visits simply because, of all the awful strips out there, he will only cover about half-a-dozen or of them, over and over, making the same criticisms, which is ironic in a way, criticizing strips for being stale and repetitive while being stale and repetitive yourself. I will mention the innumerable Far Side knockoffs which shamelessly copy Larson’s format, but are light-years from his panache or wit.
The main trend (indeed the main thread of this post) I keep seeing is a strip which starts out fresh, if not innovative for its time, but sooner or later it runs out of material and simply can’t avoid endless reruns of the same few gags (esp. if the strip has become a cash cow). It takes a very creative mind and/or drawing style to keep things fresh for a long time, and most strips simply can’t pull it off.
9 Chickweed Lane used to be my favorite comic. Then the author shifted gears and had Edda and Amos move to New York and turned it into a soap opera. I kept reading for maybe a year… and now I just can’t anymore. I wish he’d get over himself fcs.
I can’t stand Cathy for one reason- she sweats all the time. And for no reason, I just have to post this Youtube clip.
I hate Close to Home so much I read it every day just to pick apart the most god awful artwork and composition ever seen. To top it off, it is almost never funny or clever. Excellent criticism of his “comic” here.
And yet it is a Durer etching when compared to Dinette Set.
Which is the Mona Lisa compared to Reply All. How does a comic that looks like it was done on a 10-year-old version of MS Paint get a syndicate deal? Seriously?
People who are comic fans, I want to give a shout out to Sally Forth. I ignored it for years because I assumed it was a boring Hi and Lois esque family strip but it has a slightly twisted, very Gen X sense of humor that is really funny.
If people are going to cite Pogo and Peanuts, I’m going to give a shout out for one of the greatest of all time: Thimble Theater, AKA Popeye, being reprinted in big hardcovers. 5 volumes are out, the 6th due to arrive soon (I hope).
Yes! One of the only strips I enjoy unironically, and look forward to plot and character developments.
Oh, yeah…Ces Marciuliano, the writer for Sally Forth has a wicked sense of humor, which he can only unleash so far in a mainstream newspaper comic. That’s why he has a blog!
He posts a lot of comic parodies, and Sally isn’t immune, either.
I kind of like The Dinette Set if only because they are SO smug, contemptible, petty, and unknowingly stupid in their humdrum world. Mary Worth and Apt. 3-G are stupid, badly drawn, and sloooooow moving (though not as slow as Rex Morgan, MD. A whole year can go by on one storyline in Rex Morgan)…There, I’ve vented some bile on this silliness. I do love Mutts, though it’s gone downhill in recent years. I have a few collections of Mutts, very prettily rendered in a Japanese-y style in the Sunday strips. And every so often there is a strip I find deeply touching or amusing, worthy of being clipped out and taped up on the refrigerator.
As much as I love comic strips in principle, the only four I can be bothered to read any more are Doonesbury, Dilbert, Luann and 9 Chickweed Lane. The latter two are guilty pleasures because they’re so beautifully drawn but the writing sets my teeth on edge.
There are other strips I admire on a craft level–Lio, Bizarro, Zippy, Pearls Before Swine and Get Fuzzy–but the humor payoff is usually not worth the time it takes the screen to load.
Ha, I loved that critique. You could almost feel the flying spittle.